Welcome to another eWrestlingNews Question of the Day!
Giovanni Vinci might be cooked. The guy was humiliated for months as the weak link of Imperium before Gunther and Ludwig Kaiser kicked him to the curb. He then disappeared for months, even after being traded to SmackDown in the 2024 WWE Draft (just barely; he was the 6th from last on the second night’s supplemental draft…oof). After all those months, he gets repackaged as the same gimmick that didn’t get over in NXT, only to return and lose in mere seconds to Apollo Crews—someone who isn’t in a high spot on the totem pole in his own right—twice in a row, essentially.
At this point, is there really anything worth salvaging? If so, how?! Was that post-match beat down on Crews good enough, or just the smallest bit of payback possible?
My question for you today is “What would you do, if anything, to save Giovanni Vinci’s career? Or is it better if he just got released and explored other options?”
Remember to answer with your response in the comments below.
As far as my answer…
I’m a firm believer that making someone look like a total jobber, particularly after such a bad year that Vinci has had, does not set him up for a big twist of a turn. I don’t think this is going to turn into some situation where he gets fired up about this loss and suddenly starts winning tons of matches—at least, not to the point that it will matter. He might beat Crews next week and beat Baron Corbin and a few other sacrificial lambs for a month or so, at best, but he’s not going to be a viable contender to LA Knight’s United States Championship, nor work his way up to the main event level. It just won’t happen. This has played out too many times before and it never goes down that way.
The only time a losing streak or something similar ever works is when someone has already reached a decent level, fallen down, and are on their way back up. If they’ve been established, fans can get on board with buying into them regaining that position.
But that’s the key here, is that I don’t think fans are given any reason to want Vinci to turn things around, nor will they care if and when he does. He’s not being presented as a talent to be invested in despite his losses. WWE has presented him as a joke to laugh at. He’s more on point with a Simon Dean or Sylvan Grenier than when a guy like Chris Jericho could be snuffed at, but just temporarily.
Sadly, I think WWE might have already done too much damage to fix Vinci. They had an opportunity with the NXT run, but blew it. Going back to Imperium was another opportunity, and they jobbed him out. All the time missing, just to come back to do this, gives me a red alert that they don’t want to really try anything else and give him another gimmick, so this is his last-ditch effort to get over, but as a loser. If he garners enough sympathy, then maybe they’ll slowly start to work with him in some way, but it just isn’t going to happen.
If I were tasked to save his career, and I had to keep him in WWE, I would IMMEDIATELY take him off television again with a backstage segment where he says he’s embarrassed and needs to go fix whatever is wrong with him. After at least a month or two, but ideally longer, of him wrestling on house shows trying out different gimmicks to see if any of them are interesting enough, I’d eventually bring him back attacking someone and looking strong. It’s simple, but it works time and time again, to just have someone be a hunter of a random target and start a feud with whoever that might be. Maybe Kevin Owens could be the right man for the job, depending on who is on what roster at the time he’d return. But Vinci would have to win things to look like he’s worth a damn, and he’d have to not be carrying on this gimmick that no one can connect with.
A simpler plan, though, would be to just release him and let him go elsewhere. Maybe he’d be able to do something better in TNA Wrestling, where he’d be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. It’s a shame, as I remember really wanting Fabian Aichner to get signed during the Cruiserweight Classic, and I saw so much potential in him. To see how little WWE has shown any faith in him over all these years is disappointing.
What do you think? Drop your thoughts below!
